Plus ça change...
WORST NEWSPAPER This issue, we bid a fond farewell to our longrunning series of ‘Strange and Sensational Stories from the Illustrated Police News’, in which Jan Bondeson has trawled through hundreds of back issues of what was dubbed “the worst newspaper in England” in search of the stranger side of Victorian life. From dog-faced boys and rat-killing monkeys to ghastly murders and terrifying hauntings, we have enjoyed five years of Jan’s gleanings from the golden age of the gutter press – although it should be said that perhaps not every tale printed in the IPN was wholly true or would meet the higher standards of our contemporary journalists... oh, hang on a minute...
BEST FAKE NEWS Fake news is very much the topic du jour. Of course, we’ve been dealing with such stuff for decades here at Fortean Towers, and next month we’ll be revisiting the subject. Meanwhile, we invite you to sit back and enjoy the finest example of the genre to come our way in some time, courtesy of a clever fake CNN site and dissemination via the the Internet. We so wanted to believe it...
Police Officer On LSD Attempts To Save Anti-Masturbation Dolphin Mascot From Imaginary Fire Late at night on the last day of January, Police Officer Tom Downey of Phoenix, Arizona, broke into a local YMCA branch during a meeting for Christians who were “striving to live a masturbation-free lifestyle”. His intention was to save the organisation’s dolphin mascot from burning to death. When further police officers arrived, they found the 41-year-old officer naked, running around in circles and chasing the mascot. Downey said he had taken a mixture of LSD, cough medicine and antifreeze earlier that day. “He believed that the residence was on fire and he was rescuing the organisation’s dolphin mascot,” said Officer Rico Lee. “I instructed the mascot to stop, drop and roll which calmed Downey down enough for us to put handcuffs on him. In Downey’s mind, once the dolphin was safe from this imaginary fire, then his job as a police officer was successful. If this had been a real fire, and Downey hadn’t been on acid, we would probably give him an award of some kind for bravery. Unfortunately there was no fire and he was on acid.”
Phil Freedom, 41, was a witness: “This man was just standing there, naked, staring through the glass at our room where our meeting was going on with so much anger. He then broke through the glass and started running after the dolphin, taking off the mascot’s head and shouting obscenities. It was absolutely horrifying.”
The dolphin mascot was Paul Horner, 37, aka Fappy The Anti-Masturbation Dolphin, who belongs to a Christian organisation that travels around the country telling children about the alleged dangers and consequences of onanism. He described the evening’s events: “This man broke through the glass window to our room and started running around yelling ‘fire!’. That’s when he set his sights on me, telling me that dolphins shouldn’t be out of the water and that I was going to catch on fire if I didn’t immediately return to the ocean. I kept telling him that I wasn’t actually a real dolphin but just a man dressed up in a dolphin costume. Besides being on drugs, [Downey] looked like a heathenish self-rapist [sic] too. I’ll say a prayer for him, not a fullprayer though, just a half-prayer.” CNN asked Horner how he was holding up. “Beneath this dolphin costume there is more than flesh,” he said. “Beneath this mask there is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof. Remember, remember the 5th of November – which happens to be my birthday. The gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”
Downey has been charged with criminal trespassing, resisting arrest, assault, public intoxication and third degree criminal mischief. This is not his first run in with narcotics. In 2015, he was investigated for an undocumented kilo of pure cocaine that was found in his squad car; but due to a technicality, he was never charged. [AP, CNN] 1 Feb 2017.